How many parents and grandparents enroll their four year old girls in dance classes and shortly are thinking to themselves their little girl is maybe just a bit better than her classmates. Before we know it, we imagine our little angel as a professional dancer. We see the crowd taking their seats, the lights go down, the music swells up, the curtain opens, and there in the spot light is our very own dancer. That is the Kirby (Killam) Wallis story. It all began with a four year-olds dance class, and now, a few dance classes later, she makes her hometown professional debut this Saturday on the Irvine Barclay Theatre stage.
By the time she was eight, Kirby was already looking for more of a challenge and she began to study under the professional tutelage of Salwa Rizkalla and the Southland Ballet Academy in Fountain Valley, where she studied until she graduated from high school. While in high school, Kirby’s interests widened to include other styles of dance and performing in musical theater. She chose to go to Huntington Beach High School, which was farther from her home, because of its strong performing arts program and the opportunity to perform in its various productions.
“Growing up and training, , all of my teachers were pretty supportive,” Kirby told www.OC180NEWS.com. “I started in ballet – by the time I got into highs school, I got interested in modern {dance}, and musical theater, and other types of things.”
For college, Kirby got accepted at her dream school – Southern Methodist University in Texas.
“At the time I wasn’t really sure that I would be able to dance professionally, so I really wanted to find a place that had a strong dance program, but I still wanted to get a good education, if the dance thing didn’t work out,” she said.
As a dance major at SMU, she studied modern, jazz and ballet. By her senior year, she knew that ballet was the direction she wanted her career to take and started looking for companies where she could audition. After attending a performance of new choreography at Ballet Austin, she knew where she wanted to go. Luckily for her, Ballet Austin felt the same.
“In college, probably about midway through, is when I made that decision, or had that feeling, that it {professional ballet} was definitely something I wanted to go for,” she said. “And that I had that support from my professors who had the confidence that I could do it.”
Kirby is now married to Jonathan Wallis, her college sweetheart. This past year, they bought their first home just six miles from downtown and the Ballet Austin studios. Recently, she has enjoyed dancing in Stephen Mills’ Songs of Innuendo & Bach Project, Nicolo Fonte’s Left Unsaid, and Dominic Walsh’s The Whistling.
“I gave other things a try and I enjoyed them, there’s just something about ballet that is the most satisfying – the most challenging, yet, the most rewarding at the same time,” she told us.
Kirby Wallis will be dancing in NCI Discovery 2010, Sat July 31 at 8pm, part of the National Choreographers Initiative, Molly Lynch, artistic director. The National Choreographers Initiative, Which engages choreographers from around the United States, was developed to promote the creation and production of new professional dance.
NCI provides a workshop setting where choreographers can initiate new work as well as experiment and develop their craft. Through NCI, the southern California community has an opportunity to be a part of the process of creating new contemporary ballets and seeing these works performed for the very first time.
Irvine Barclay Theatre
4242 Campus Dr, Irvine
Tickets: $23
Call 949.854.4646 or go online www.thebarclay.org
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading …
About Dolores Barr, Publisher
Dolores Barr has lived in Rossmoor since 1992 and has created this site to provide local news for the people of Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Rossmoor, Leisure World, Sunset Beach, and Surfside, California. My husband and I have had two students graduate from the Los Alamitos Unified School District and currently our Grandson, Ricky Apodaca, grade 3 at Weaver Elementary, is actively involved in youth baseball through LAYB and youth football through FNL.
In 
